Veteran inspires new citizens, students with experiences
Harry Watts has one message for new Canadians and local students: “There ain’t nothin’ you can’t do.” That’s what the 88-year-old veteran from Kitchener, Ont., learned from his years in the army. During the Second World War, he was a dispatch rider, delivering top secret messages on his motorcycle in war-ravaged Italy and Holland.
Watts learned how to move quickly and stealthily with his envelopes across armed roads. He nearly had his head lopped off when someone strung wire across the road and, another time, he was so close to being shot by a German sniper that he heard the bullet whiz by him. He travelled in heavy rain and snow and thick mud and dust.
He felt powerful. “I was king when I was on that bike,” he says.
He returned to Canada confident he could take anything that was thrown at him. But since he had dropped out of high school before joining the army, there wasn’t a lot he could do. He worked on a nursery, a job he grew up doing on his family’s farm, until he started taking night classes to finish his education years later.
Watts retired in 1988 and he has been volunteering ever since. He has been making speeches at local citizenship ceremonies for the past three years. Watts has been speaking at schools in the area for more than 10. He stresses the importance of education and working hard, and he shares his stories from the war.
In his home in the Forest Heights region, Watts has surrounded himself with memories. One room is covered in photographs from his time in the war and his adventures since. Cards from the schools he visits sit on a table and a leather vest covered in pins and his dispatch rider patch hang there. “I didn’t realize how important it was. When you’re a 19, 20year-old kid, you just go and do it,” he says. “Looking back on it, God, that was a lot of responsibility.”
When he recounts his stories at the citizenship ceremonies, like at the schools he speaks to, all eyes are glued on him. Judge Sharon Robertson, who has sat behind him for three years as he delivered speeches to eager young Canadians, watches the reactions in the crowd. They look at him with appreciation and respect, she says. “I see how they look when other guests come, but it’s different when I see them look at Harry. They know that they’re going to learn something.”
He looks back at them with the same admiration. “I consider it such a privilege and honour to welcome these new Canadians,” he says. “I think, gosh, what a wonderful country we must have that these people want to come live here.”
Sometimes he reads a poem written by his wife Leila, an artist and teacher who passed away in 2005. She would watch children walk to and from Forest Hill Public School, near their house.
Watts encourages new Canadians to persevere, to work as hard as pioneers did when Canada was a new country, and as hard as their children, who fought in the wars.
“That same stubbornness was reflected in their sons and grandsons who made up the Canadian army,” he says. “That made them good soldiers.”
He has captivated the students at New Dawn School, a one-year alternative program designed to help students who are at risk of dropping out. He’s a familiar face at the school; he gets a lot of hugs, and he goes by Grandpa AlPro (Alternative Program) or Grandpa New Dawn. He’s a regular speaker on Remembrance Day, graduation and VE day, but he also drops in occasionally for lunch.
He runs a writing contest for the students; the winners get $50 from Watts on graduation day. The next day, the students go to Canada’s Wonderland.
Watts can relate to the hardships of the youth at New Dawn; they remind him of when he was 15. “He sees them as diamonds in the rough, a lot of potential, just not yet tapped,” says Mike Campbell, the principal at New Dawn. Students can tell that he has their best interest at heart, says Campbell, and that’s what makes him so likable.
The students are moved by the stories he tells, too. He shared how, in 1945, Canadians dropped food to the Dutch people. That winter, thousands died of starvation. No one was sure if the Germans would let the Canadians fly in, so the crew carried old pennies in their pockets and nicknamed the plane “Bad Penny.” As the proverb goes, bad pennies always return. When the Lancaster bomber plane flew in low, the people on the ground thought they were about to be bombed — until food landed at their feet.
After hearing his stories, the students at New Dawn prepared a book to thank the Dutch people for the kindness they’d extended to the Canadians who had lost their lives in the war. Watts went to Holland for the 60th anniversary of the liberation ceremony in the Netherlands. During the parade, he rode a Second World War motorcycle for the first time since the war. With the book in his jacket pocket, he snuck through security to deliver his final dispatch, to Princess Margriet of the Netherlands.
Watts doesn’t want to see the contributions of the Canadian veterans forgotten.
In 2001, Watts self-published “The Dispatch Rider,” a memoir of his time in the army, after he discovered that there were no records of the dispatch riders in the archives in Ottawa.
“It was like we never existed,” he says, “there was nothing there about us as individuals.”
He donated a copy of his book to the legislative library and sells them by hand at local events. Proceeds from the book go to the National Service Dogs, a charity that provides dogs to veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. He’s sold and given away 2,200 books so far.
He wants students to remember that all veterans want is to be thanked. It took him 15 years to get his first thank you, from a student at New Dawn School who was moved by one of his speeches.
“Thank you for what you did for us,” she said.